What I Learned This Week – Carter Williams | 8.25.24

We’re excited to share that we will re-publish Carter Williams’ column – What I Learned This Week – here on Food Is Health. Carter is the Managing Director of iSelect Fund and also publishes the Creative Destruction newsletter. Make sure you check it out and subscribe.

What I learned this week…

I attended Becknology Days this week, along with 15,000+ of Beck’s Hybrids customers, for their annual AgTech showcase. (Thanks Brad Fruth). Also caught up with our port co SwarmFarm Robotics who will be at Farm Progress this coming week.

AgTech is not a technology problem right now, it’s a technology adoption problem.

Beck’s just sells seeds, so Beck’s customers also adopt a broad range of technology to improve productivity. Beck’s Practical Farm Research (PFR) program tests seeds against all forms of input and production tools used in Agriculture. PFR trials range from the quality of fertilizer to new automated weed spray technology.

To reduce the healthcare cost of poor nutrition, customers need affordable nutrition. Yield, classically measured as bushels per acre, is changing to protein per bushel. Beck’s “Seed only” business, matched with PFR equips Beck’s farmers with the Open Architecture to speed the adoption of technology leading to food is health.

Other things I learned…..
1) Flash fiction: I envy Tom Sawyers’s marketing skills to turn a failed painting operation into a viral fence painting juggernaut.

2) Every entrepreneur should re-read Chapter 2 of “Tom Sawyer.” (https://lnkd.in/grX6qtDW)

3) There are probably more than 100 nutrition/diabetes health apps. None is driving viral growth. Duolingo’s growth blows away any competing language apps. Why haven’t entrepreneurs mastered the dopamine trigger for food is health or lifestyle medicine apps?

4) The Singularity: Sometime within the next 5 years plan for a GLP-1 like cure for obesity priced below $100/month. Leading to 80M+ people in the U.S. eating 25% fewer calories and 45% less ultra processed food.

5) Does anyone think Inari‘s genetic traits for yield (bushels per acre) will materially disrupt Bayer/Corteva’s core genetics business?

6) Does yield (Bu/Acre) matter? Given the following equations
a) Genetics x Environment x Management = Yield + Nutrition
b) Yield = 1/Nutrition.
Solve for optimized nutrition (Eric Smith).

7) To improve crop yield, taste and/or nutrition, look down, not up.

8) Soil health causes yield, taste, and nutrition to be positively correlated. Genetic optimization generally causes yield/nutrition to be negatively correlated.

9) Root View: Reducing tractor tire pressure from 35 psi to 28 psi improves per-acre output from 217.6 to 220.2 bushels. Reduced soil compaction allows roots to move down rather than horizontally. Deeper roots generally mean more moisture.

10) According to La Trobe University, the human Y chromosome is degenerating and may disappear in a few million years. Other deprecated human traits include appendix, tail, palmar grasp reflex, body hair/goosebumps, and ear muscles. Blue eyes are also on the decline.

11) If a human takes a dog on a walk, measuring 10,000 steps, has the dog taken 20,000 steps?

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